“All your working life,” asks an exasperated wife, “you’ve studied these stories. Why?”
She means the stuff of folklore, her husband’s academic field, in which most narratives take a turn to the surreal. The man replies that such stories...
I was participating fully in Life,
or so my calendar said,
when I had the spiritually extravagant
gift of being heart-struck,
standing before a painting.
Flagged to a halt by a woman in bootsand an oiled canvas coat, we stopped for her
orange flag on the highway yesterday inthe first flurries of the season and watched
Bridget is on her way to Mong Kok to buy a goldfish. She’s been told that they bring good luck.
I’m docked at a lake that
the people don’t attend.
Machete on my hip to
make a devil cough up
A paycheck. A nadir. Hired as accompanimentfor sequined swimmers in an amphitheater in Queens.To keep the band working. A footnote.
It must be so hard to be Miles Davis
and a ghost, and to sit in my kitchen
as I squeal along on a dime-store horn
Venezuela’s Stalled Revolution
